Truth & Rumors: Allenby challenges Ogilvy to fight

Monday, November 28, 2011

Frustrations from the Presidents Cup boiled over as a spat between Robert Allenby and Geoff Ogilvy came close to blows in front of 150 guests at the Hyatt Regency Coolum while celebrating Greg Chalmers Australian PGA victory, reports Steve Orme. Allenby, who went 0-4 without earning the International team a single point at Royal Melbourne, laid the groundwork for the feud when he placed the blame on his teammate for his poor performance.

The 40-year-old hit back at criticism of his own play on Thursday and appeared to deflect the blame onto his playing partners—Retief Goosen, YE Yang and Ogilvy.He claimed Goosen missed several birdie putts in Thursday's foursomes, insinuated that Yang didn't pull his weight in Friday's fourball and claimed Ogilvy 'hit me in the tree three times off the tee and I had to chip out three times', in Saturday's foursomes.

When Allenby sauntered over to Ogilvy's table and sat down at around 9:15 PM on Sunday night, the 2006 US Open champion immediately made his dissatisfaction known.He was overheard accusing Allenby of throwing him under the bus and openly questioned his character, which sent the four-time PGA winner into a rage.Allenby inadvertently broke a wine glass and screamed 'do you want to go?', prompting Ogilvy, who was surrounded by seven friends, to get out of his chair in front of a captivated and stunned audience.

The ugly stoush escalated once again as Allenby invited his adversary to meet him outside of the main square, to which Ogilvy quipped 'I'd like that'.

"I have no intention of joining Lee and Rory because it means playing just too many tournaments," said Kaymer, who noted that playing 12 European and 15 U.S. events would require "just far too much traveling."

"I just don't know why Rory and Lee go back and forth and that to me seems a little strange. One year they are on the PGA Tour and next they're not."

"The big problem with golf at present is a calendar issue and we've told all the Tours that they have to stop being so greedy," Urquhart told reporters. "There are too many tournaments and they are adding tournaments all the time.”

"And to treat Asia as the stopgap as they do with this week's World Cup is not right. It's wrong and the Tours are not going to win if they keep treating Asia as a stopgap. They need to show Asia more respect.” "Why can't there be a big event like the World Cup here in Asia in June? What's the difference in taking a flight from London to Beijing or London to Los Angeles?”

"The Federation and Mission Hills know my feeling on this because before this year I was not happy with the fields we were getting, but we've got three Major winners here this year and there's been a lot more respect shown to the event," he said. "While there are not too many countries in the world who could organize an event like China, the tournament needs to travel around the world." "Done properly and packaged properly, and staged at a better time of year, no one ... would go anywhere else in the world that given week but to play in the World Cup.”